Tea Parties and Terabytes : the Digital Library Revolution

Tea Party

A few months ago on Publib , I entertained the idea of replacing a brick and mortar library with electronic book readers and subscriptions.

Our local free library had spent about $8,000,000 on a library renovation / reconstruction employing grants, local taxes, donations and state funds. Notably, it had started out being about a 4 million dollar project. What would 8 million dollars along with yearly operating funds purchase now? Could the needs of library users be met with electronic book readers and subscriptions? Could accessibility be expanded?

Asking those questions met with sharp disapproval from the librarian in Rhode Island who had overseen the project. She characterized me as a tea bagger – (derogatory slang meaning Tea Party member) for daring to bring up the idea. At least I think that was what she meant. The Urban Dictionary has some other definitions that are not very nice.

I'm late !

Why would entertaining a simple idea of how 8 million dollars could have been spent create such a visceral reaction? Public libraries represent the most efficient aspect of local government. Hardly any library system is a beneficiary of public largess. The entire loosely affiliated public library system in the United States is efficient because of internalized ethics, highly trained personnel and sharing. Sharing resources means everyone benefits. Sharing is something other public services have never done as well as public libraries. Are public libraries in such precarious shape that civil discourse threatens libraries as the bastions of civil discourse? Is time running out? Are we too late?

Imagine no brick and mortar library exists. What sort of digital book access could an initial 8 million dollar investment and a yearly operating budget of $480,000 afford? …

$8,000,000 could buy:

A $480,000 operating budget could purchase:

Lots of electronic books. The cost of many titles through Amazon’s Kindle program is $9.99 or less. So, yearly new ebook accession could be greater than or equal to 48,000 titles. That seems like a fairly small collection to support sixty thousand ebook readers.

The 60,000 ebook readers could also be shared within households. With 2.59 people on average per household – 155,400 people would be sharing only 48,000 titles. That is less than 1/3 of a book simultaneously available to all readers at once during the first year.

The United States Government along with State and Local Governments are providing more and more public information in digital format.

So, what does that mean?

60,000 households could each have immediately access to hundreds of thousands of free books and articles and increasing access to new books and articles.

But what about catalogs and reader services? Doesn’t everyone need catalog help? These collections are HUGE!

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the United States. The Library of Congress Catalog is massive and serves as the expert resource for copyright. The Librarians who staff the Library of Congress are some of the most highly compensated in the US.

Encore tells us that we should use other words and check our spelling. It offers no leads to additional material. Amazon provided the book, the electronic version, reviews, shots of inside pages and related works. Some library catalogs intergrate similar features in the user interface, but they are not leading the way. They are merely following the examples of successful for-profit library catalogs that only recently began to market books.

The Digital Library Revolution

$8,ooo,ooo in construction expenditures and a $480,000 yearly budget represents the real-world costs of operating a public library in a community with about 22,000 residents and a fairly small collection. Using the revolutionary digital library model presented here, the same funds would support 155,400 people in 60,000 households while providing instant access to terabytes of digitized collections.

The digital library revolution is a radical departure from the way that library materials are contained, published and distributed. Instead of allowing public libraries to disappear from the conversation, civil discourse should continue that includes public libraries as significant partners and facilitators in the evolution of this digital library revolution. It is not too late.

“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” ~ Lewis Carroll